


Vesen

by LevelSetPower



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Iceland, Insecure Kang Yeosang, Jongho can speak Icelandic in this, Kang Yeosang-centric, M/M, Once again I can only apologise for this, Self-Esteem Issues, Westfjords, Working On Your Problems, Yeosang feels unwanted, Yeosang goes to Iceland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LevelSetPower/pseuds/LevelSetPower
Summary: Vesen (n.) - something that is more difficult than it needs to be__________There was no two ways about it. He had these adorable eyes and a face with a roundness that Yeosang found incredibly comforting. He looked like he’d be a good cuddl-And there he went! Jumping into this ridiculous fantasy about a dude he met one time. This was always how it went. He’d somehow find ways to seek out Jongho during his stay, which would end in a failed and incredibly awkward confession, leading to more of his tears and a deeper trench of his self-hatred being unveiled.He had to fight the temptation to go down that road. The whole point of this fucking trip was to not fall for someone and get rejected again.__________Yeosang thinks no one will ever love him. So he goes to Iceland. (You're right. That doesn't make sense.)
Relationships: Choi Jongho/Kang Yeosang
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	1. Old Shit / New Shit

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hey hey! 
> 
> Ok before we get into my rambles, some disclaimers:
> 
> 1\. I apologize to everyone from the Republic of Iceland. I am not Icelandic but I studied and lived in the place this story takes place, and I have tried not to make any offensive generalizations or inaccurate statements. To be honest, there will be more about the place than the people, but if I make a mistake please let me know! Takk fyrir!
> 
> 2\. (Potential TW // Self-Esteem issues/Self-dislike) The Yeosang in this story is NOT how I think of him, at all. It's all a character, and a representation of some insecurities many of us may have fro time to time. I don't have Yeosang I wuvs him and think he deserves the world, so don't misunderstand. If you're easily upset or triggered by someone talking about (fairly mild, I think?) self-esteem issues and such, please beware! 
> 
> 3\. This might seem angstier than my other stuff, and it sort of is? but I'm hoping to make it fluffier later while also stretching myself to deal with some different topics. 
> 
> 4\. This work was heavily inspired by the album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations by Eels, and as such the chapters will have names of songs from that album that I would recommend listening to (in general, but also to accompany the chapter!). This album is great and captures some of the sadness Yeosang feels (only in the beginning tho!). 
> 
> Anyway! Continuing the theme of Lin writing stories about slightly random things she happens to know something about. I hope this story finds you well! 
> 
> Stay safe and spicy!

Iceland is an island country home to around 340,000 people, located by itself in the middle of the North Sea with its nearest neighbor being Greenland, an island of ice and very few people. Iceland, therefore, could be said to be lonely. Battling the harsh, freezing winds and waves of the subarctic climate. It’s being pulled in two directions, as the European and North American tectonic plates separate beneath its feet. 

No part of the country feels this harshness more than the Westfjords. It is, unsurprisingly, found in the west of the country, specifically the northwest. And it is made of fjords. Fjords are long narrow bodies of water created by retreating glaciers millions of years ago. In fact, there remain some active glaciers on Iceland to this day. It’s called _Iceland_ for a reason. 

The Westfjords is home to only around 7,000 people. Even in a country as minute as Iceland in terms of population, this is all. It’s an 8-hour drive to the capital city from the edge of the region, and from some towns, it takes even longer. This is made more difficult by the fact that Iceland has one (1) main road around the country since there are inhospitable glaciers and geysers found in the country’s central region. This means many people have to go the long way round.

Núpur is a town only in name. It consists of two white buildings, a church which is maintained purely out of tradition, and a road. Located in Dýrafjörður, it existed only as a boarding school for local children from 1902 until the late ’90s, when it was turned into a hotel. The hotel is basic at best, offering rooms that were clearly schoolchildren’s dorms not that long ago. Local amenities include, well, nothing. The nearest significant town, Ísafjörðurm is a 45-minute drive away, through a tunnel someone had the foresight to build straight into the mountains. Otherwise, the drive would take 2 hours. Ísafjörður is home to a practically humongous population of 2,700, making it the London, New York, or Beijing of the Westfjords. It boasts at least three shops. 

Many would wonder, therefore, why anyone would want to go there. 

Why would you want to trek to a country in the middle of nowhere only to then go to the most middle-of-nowhere part of that country? Why would you want to deliberately go to this sparse and desolate region, and further, choose to stay in Nupur? 

* * *

Yeosang had a problem. 

He couldn’t put his finger on it. But he knew something was wrong with him. Yang was clearly somehow defective. Not fit for purpose. Everyone around him, of all types of personality, all genders, everything. Had found a relationship at one point or another. His friends from school, his part-time job colleagues, his random social media followers. He was the only one left alone. It wasn’t even like he had lots of relationships and they just never worked out. He hadn’t even got to that stage! 

Tripped at the first hurdle. Dead on arrival. 

This fact about him, his eternal unwantedness, alternated between plaguing him greatly, causing tears, sleepless nights, headaches (of varying degrees of literalness), and, on the other hand, something he joyfully embraced. He sometimes decided he didn’t need that shit, and that he would be just fine alone forever. Relationships came and went faster than he cared for, and he couldn’t deal with the stress of fighting and breaking up, he told himself. In these parts of te cycle, he was fine, telling himself he should live his life for himself, not for anyone else, and only do the shit he wanted to do. Really, the fact no one alive wanted him was a blessing, sparing him from the romantic chickens with their head cut off running around falling in and out of love, wasting their time on Earth with such foolish pursuits. 

But other times, namely when his heart decided to start liking someone without his permission, or when someone had the audacity to be nice to him so as to get his hopes up, he didn’t feel like that. He felt like the most worthless creation in the universe. He was the one item left on the shelf, the one chip left in the bag, uneaten. He began to consider why it was that he was so undesirable. He knew that attractiveness wasn’t to do with it. Not because he saw himself as good-looking or anything remotely close, but because he saw his friends, all of them, of varying levels of conventional attractiveness, have their fair share of love exploits. Yeosang didn’t think much of himself but knew he was solidly average at worst, so this clearly wasn’t where he was going wrong. 

He wondered if he was, on a level obvious to everyone except him, a terrible person. That at least would provide a logical explanation. This line of thinking obviously led to spirals, such as that all his supposed friends were just humoring, pitying him. That’s why no one from Tinder or school, or work, ever liked him. He was just flawed personally in some fatal, irreversible, innate way so as to remove him from anyone’s romantic running completely.

Yeosang didn’t know which of the options he’d rather be true. 

And it wasn’t like he never tried!

He had Tinder, he chatted with people, he went to college parties, he made friends all over the place. He spoke to people, trying to get them interested in him, presenting the vest version of himself he thought he could construct. He had one too many glasses of wine and got a bit flirty with people on more than one occasion.

And still, nothing went anywhere, at all.

The friends he had spoken to about his feelings were all sympathetic, but couldn’t offer anything beyond the bottled comforts he knew that they would say. While he wholeheartedly appreciated their attempts and knew that he was being a huge Debbie downer by talking about his eternal isolation, he found little comfort from their words. _He was a great person, he deserved someone who would love him and treat him well, he just had to wait for the right time, practice makes perfect, the right person is probably just around the corner._

Bullshit!

He thought it was all bullshit. He felt bad for taking up his friend’s time by discussing the issue at length, so understood why they’d probably use such responses to lovingly get him to shut the fuck up and move on to a topic less mopey than his loneliness. But he had cold hard evidence to contradict everytihg they were saying. Facts. Data. Correlations. Other statistics words. The dissonance between what his friends said and his lived experience just made him feel more upset. As a result, he had given up on speaking to anyone about it. 

Every new opportunity that came along in his life; every new friendship, activity, responsibility, anything, had him wondering if maybe this next one was the _one_ one. The one where everything would change. Everyone was so obsessed with telling him that someone would turn up someday, that they were just around the corner, so he couldn’t help but wonder, just a little bit if every new person he met might be able to look past his flaws and help make him less lonely. But that never happened. He couldn't help but resent his friends for getting his hopes up when this happened. 

He had also considered the fact that maybe, he was too desperate. He wanted it too much. People could tell, and some kind of universe memo that he never remembered receiving told everyone you can’t love someone if they want it too badly. There has to be a certain degree of nonchalance, of _laissez-faire_ , in order to qualify one for being loved. Besides the fact Yeosang felt personally offended that he never got this memo, he had tried that too! During the period in the cycle when he felt like romance would just hold him back, giving in to his animalistic urges which he clearly would benefit from ignoring in favor of higher ideals. He spent a fair amount of time in this state (like, maybe half his time?) and still, nothing. So it wasn’t that he was too desperate either. 

He wished he could opt out of the mailing list that is human emotion. He wished he could continue at school, and at his job, without such worries of whether or not anyone actually would ever want him. If he could just find out, he’d be fine. If some ghost, or spirit, or twisted cupid thing, or whatever, came and told him that he’d definitely die alone, that would be fine. At least he would know! And he could divert his attention from the people “Around the corner, just wait for little more!” as his friends would say, and focus on other shit he wanted to do in his life, outside of the practical joke that was romance. 

In a bout of questionable decision-making, one night after another conversation with someone we thought might have been a _someone_ fizzled out unceremoniously, he said “fuck it!”

Like, actually, out loud, he said fuck it out loud.

He went on whatever hotel booking website came up first on Google, and thought of some places he could go to get away from the whole thing. The whole other people thing, mainly. _Where could he go to get his shit together, to stop obsessing over his desirableness, or distinct lack thereof?_

At first, he thought of tropical islands. Barbados! St Lucia!

He could get a coconut cocktail, don a Hawaiian shirt and chillax at the beach, away from anyone he knew and anyone he would know. He could live a hermit life on the island, only talking to others when strictly necessary, swimming in the sea to clear his head, and sorting his fucking life out. 

But then he checked the prices. A number of stopovers would be required from Korea to any of the fun islands he’d thought of. So, scratch that. He abandoned that whole line of inquiry and just looked for cheap flights to anywhere from ICN. Anywhere. 

Then one popped up. **ICN - KEF- RKV - IFJ.**

His first thought was, _ew. 3 stopovers? How could this be cheaper than the tropical islands?_ But there it was, only $300. _Must be trying to fill seats_ , he guessed. 

At this point, he wondered about quitting this whole plan entirely. Sobered by the lack of immediately perfect available options, he wondered if this too was a folly, just like the love he was trying to run away from. 

Just then, his phone buzzed.

Another noncommittal message from the supposed someone he had been talking to.

This spurred him into action like nothing else, and before he knew it, he had bought the seat on the ICN - KEF - RKV - IFJ flight. 

_Now, where was IFJ?_

He did some more Googling and found a piece from a hipster travel blog written at the height of the tourism boom in 2017. The _Icelandic_ tourism boom of 2017.

_Ísafjörður Airport (IATA: IFJ) is an airport serving Ísafjörður, a town in the Westfjords region in northwestern Iceland. Ísafjörður, meaning ice fjord, is a town in the Westfjords part of northwest Iceland. The Westfjords make up the entirety of northwest Iceland, an area of great size but only hosting 2% of Iceland’s already-tiny population. The area mostly consists of mountains and fjords, undisturbed nature, and rugged landscapes perfect for adventurers who love escaping the humdrum of daily life in favor of fresh air, whipping winds, and some of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world._

Yeosang sighed, muted his notifications, and hoped this batshit adventure wouldn’t end in him falling off whatever a _fjord_ was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this is shaping up interesting for you all! This might be a slightly unusual narrative arc/setting/theme or whatever, but that's my jam! I promise there will be happier fluff later, but also self-love, acceptance, and confidence!! Join me on this journey to achieve what I want Yeosang to achieve in this story.
> 
> Also, please let me know what you think of the song/album if you listen to it!
> 
> Stay spicy!


	2. Blinking Lights (For Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Right, then. We need to balance the weight so we don’t crash into the sea, so who had one too many hotdogs yesterday?” she smirked, and the other passengers laughed, 
> 
> Yeosang paled again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my hotdogs!
> 
> Getting somewhere with this narrative, I hope!! I have a fair amount of this prewritten so I wanted to get it up to whet your appetites and buy me some more time haha.

The connection, as Yeosang begrudgingly found out, between the mysteriously named KEF and RVK was, in fact, not on a plane. IcelandAir cheerfully dropped him at KEF, which he learned stood for Keflavik, Iceland’s international airport, and handed him.. a _bus ticket?_

“What the fuck?” he had said. 

The immigration lady cheerfully informed him he just needed to grab a bus down the road to the other airport. 

Why did a country with fewer people than Yeosang’s sub-district of Pohang have two airports? Three! If you also counted his destination IFJ,. 

Fortunately, his plane ticket was valid on the bus, so he hopped on and drove to the promised land, RVK. The landscape was a bit underwhelming if he was honest. As he watched the flat, black ground roll by, formed by volcanic ash, the bus driver cheerfully narrated, he wondered if the mountains even existed in the place or he’d been had. The landscape was flat as far as the eye could see. Nothing even remotely resembling either a mountain or any water that needs to go in a fjord. 

He felt that the water wheel start churning in his chest, rising and then dropping his anxiety just to keep him on his toes. He fiddled with his phone, eternally grateful for the lack of service. He hadn’t told anyone he was going. He wanted a clean break.

After an agonizing hour drive, through more black volcanic rock, several alarmingly large pipes right next to the side of the road which the driver also cheerfully informed them was carrying molten aluminum for smelting, they arrived at what Yeosang thought was a rest stop.

“BIS! Final Stop! Bus Station! Umferðarmiðstöð!” the happy driver announced. Probably was happy to get home and away from the molten metal pipes.

How was this the final stop?? There was, and he was not exaggerating here, nothing. A set of public bathrooms, an outside smoking area, and a small shop selling maps and other bus tickets. Yeosang didn't think this bus station could hold his entire lecture class. Maybe 20 people max?

Sighing, he alighted, seeing no choice.

The rotund and white-haired bus driver pointed into the distance as he gave Yeosang his case. 

“Airport, there!, Reykjavik!” he chirped.

Placing his hand on his forehead to block the aggressively shining sun, he noticed a tiny, tiny runway about 500 meters down the road. He watched a plane with PROPELLERS taking off, flapping about in the wind like one of those polystyrene toys you got with chocolate eggs.

Yeosang paled. 

The man said a magnanimous goodbye, got in the bus that had filled with around 10 people clearly going to the airport he had just come from and sped off.

Yeosang sighed.

He grabbed his holdall and tried to work out how to walk to the airport. In front of him was presumably the Icelandic equivalent of a highway, a 4 lane road stretching straight between him and the promised land.

He crossed the road outside the bus station and trundled along with his case, constantly bashing the back of his knees on accident.  The wind smashed him straight in the face, getting pollen in his eye and occasionally making him cough.

Okay, so not a great start. For the second time today, the water wheel churned to life, unsettling his heart and giving a megaphone to the small nagging voice in his head reminding him he was no good at anything, not even doing a runner.

He came across a tiny, tiny crossing. It looked more fit for a quaint village street than for a main road to the airport. Nothing seemed to be coming, though, and he was conscious his flight left in 2 hours, so he trotted across and hoped no other airport buses would randomly appear and strike him.

The airport building was no bigger than the bus station. It consisted of basically one room, and the flights were listed on a screen, all 4 of them that is. Accompanying him on the flight appeared to be around 6 other people. 

Upon boarding, he noticed it was, indeed, a propellor plane, and one with only two seats in each row, one either side of the aisle.

The blonde flight attendant’s smile was almost blinding, whiteness like the sun had shone. She waited until everyone had boarded and sat in their non-assigned seats, then regarded the group of passengers with a humorous look on her face.

“Right, then. We need to balance the weight so we don’t crash into the sea, so who had one too many hotdogs yesterday?” she smirked, and the other passengers laughed, 

Yeosang paled again.

After some more giggles from the other passengers, and some shuffling around in their seats they were off. 

The flight was equally beautiful, stunning, breathtaking, and fucking terrifying. He was the vista of the Icelandic landscape with a bird’s eye view, finally glimpsing the mountains, glaciers, and fjords he had been promised. They swept up along the  Sólheimajökull glacier, where Yeosang even saw some people, tiny dots, climbing on the glacier. They saw the rugged coastline and black sand beaches at Vik, and the tiny huts wedged into the landscape, painted in reds and blues and whites. 

However, the final approach involved flying between two mountains who were only slightly further apart than the wingspan of the plane. The blonde attendant came over the PA again, announcing everyone should confess to their sins “in case we go down” and then said something about butter? Yeosang wondered if his fight or flight response meant he forgot how to English. 

Thankfully, they made it, with only a couple more jokes about their imminent demise from the flight attendant, and touched down safely. From the window, he saw what he presumed was the entire town. A harbor, and around 3 streets’ worth of buildings, most notably a huge soccer pitch. 

“Thanks for flying IcelandAir Connect - kill ya next time!” the blonde quipped. Yeosang wondered if he could drive back to Reykjavik whenever he decided to leave. 

He got off the bus outside one of the quote un-quote  _ shops _ , a small supermarket called Netto. He remembered his phone didn't work, and he hadn’t booked a fucking hotel, so decided to chance his luck in the store.

He saw an uninterested teenager at the counter, wearing a grey uniform with frosted tips like he was the Icelandic secret member of Smashmouth. 

“Uh.. hotel?” he asked.

The teenager looked up from his phone, raised an eyebrow as if to say _how dare you assume I don’t have a perfect command of the English language?_ , and before he knew it, he was being hauled into a van with the promise of a hotel.

They drove for longer than Yeosang thought possible, given the size of the town. Wondered if he’d fallen asleep when suddenly everything became dark. He wondered where exactly he’d wake up. But then he saw orange lights above and road paintings down below and realized he was, in fact, in a tunnel.

“Uh, excuse me? Where are we going?” he timidly ventured.

“Ou said hotel, right? I’m taking you to the hotel” the teenager stated matter of factly.

“Oh, uh. Okay.” Yeosang didn’t dare ask more. 

They emerged from the tunnel some half-hour later, Yeosang’s heart sinking more and more every minute. He thought crime wasn’t a thing in Iceland? 

The mountains towered above the small van as it weaved along the roads between them. Green moss patterned the sheer faces, with some small snow caps at the top reminding him he was, in fact, basically in the arctic. 

There were barely any other cars on the road, and Yeosang wondered just how much further they’d have to go before reaching the hotel. If there even was a hotel and he wasn’t going to be thrown in the sea or some shit. 

Eventually, they pulled into a rest stop, not far from the end of the tunnel. On the left was a large hill (hillock? Mountain? Yeosang guessed they probably had more fun words for it in Icelandic) and the driver got out, presumably to decide how to burn his body or sell him to whale hunters or whatever. 

He rested his head against the glass and stared at the emptiness before him. Was this hotel going to be in the middle of nowhere, like where he currently was? He supposed he shouldn’t complain, since that was sort of the point. 

Suddenly, the door opened and he fell out, smashing his face onto the gravel below.

_ Ah, so this was how the Viking funeral started.  _

He braced himself for impact and spent some time thinking about how he’d die alone. No partner or significant other to miss him. No one to miss cuddling him. No one to reminisce about how pretty he looked when talking about video games or Son Heung-min. 

It _wasn’t not_ a fitting end. Yeosang, unloveable, unwanted Yeosang, meets his maker in this place of great beauty and calm. 

However, the impact didn’t come. 

“What you doing, boy?” a voice boomed above him in English, different to the teenage kidnapped.

He didn't respond and just curled further into himself, thinking at some point the fire, or swords, or whatever they used up there, would come.  Suddenly, he was being lifted off the ground and placed back on his feet.

“You okay?” the man spoke, and Yeosang was confused.

He was large, with greying curly hair and large, deep-set blue eyes. He wore a rust0coloured shirt with cargo shorts (in the arctic!) and an apron, and his thick arms were crossed over his chest.

He didn’t exactly look like the kind of guy who would be giving Yeosang a Viking funeral.

“ Talarðu islensku?” The man asked, tilting his head in confusion.

Okay, now everyone was confused.  Suddenly, a hand waved itself in front of his face from behind. It must have been the person who picked him up.

“Do you speak English?” he asked, in Korean, for some reason.

Yeosang whipped around in pure shock at finding someone in the middle of the fucking tundra who spoke Korean. Wasn’t the whole point to avoid people who spoke Korean? Or, people in general, he supposed.

The man he saw was, in fact, also Korean. At least he looked it. He had black hair covering most of his forehead, right up until his large doe eyes. His lips were pouted in confusion and he worse a black hoodie and sweats, obviously not as used to the cold and brisk wind as the other man. He also had an apron on. 

Nope.

_Nopenopenopenopenope_.

Yeosang was NOT going there. Nope.

The whole point of this trip was NOT to think about his perpetual loneliness, and how no one ever wanted him. The way to deal with that issue was NOT to meet a cute Korean boy in the middle of nowhere. Yeosang could just picture the cycle happening all over again. Yeosang falls, random guy in hoodie obviously doesn’t because Yeosang is a defective human being incapable of being loved, Yeosang is heartbroken and this whole trip has been a waste. And Yeosang can never return to Iceland out of shame. 

“Uh, my name is Yeosang. I would like a room in the hotel. Where is it? How far is it?” he rattled off in English, determinedly ignoring cute guy in hoodie. 

The large (presumably Icelandic, but hey, who was Yeosang to stereotype?) man grinned, teeth not even close to white, but still somehow kind and comforting. He gestured to the rest stop an-

Wait.

That wasn’t a rest stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, the only thing I'll describe in this story that I didn't actually do was go to Reykjavik airport or fly from RVK to IFJ. I drove the 8 hours, which is beautiful, but I wanted to describe the insane plane journey my friends told me about. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Stay Spicy!

**Author's Note:**

> More is coming soon! I am planning to be productive and actually write a lot this month, so let's see how that goes. If you listen to the song/album, please let me know what you think! 
> 
> Stay safe and spicy out there, friends!
> 
> PS, you can google Hotel Nupur for pictures of the exact place in this story, and also for some idea of the location this is based on. Also, I think that the hotel has now sadly closed so this can be its swan song!


End file.
